Bound to You (11 page)

“Do you have another condom, John?”

“No,” he replied, his voice thick with regret.

“Then untie me and let me suck you.”

She heard the raggedness of his breath as he leaned close, his hands behind her back. His penis, warm, heavy and hard as a poker, brushed against her heaving belly.

She went to her knees immediately when her hands were free, her role in their sex play forgotten. Only hunger ruled her—that and her innate understanding of how much he hurt for relief.

He spoke to her as she sucked him. His deep, ragged voice blended with the feeling of his thick, pulsing cock in her mouth and hand, mixed with the scent of his arousal filling her nose, and mingled with the taste of him on her tongue, until she didn’t need to see him; he was with her, racing in her blood, throbbing in every cell of her being.

“How can you be so sweet and small and suck so hard?” he muttered, his voice cracking. He hissed when she scraped the edge of her teeth against the underside of his penis on her sweep upwards. “And you knew my sweet spot from the first, didn’t you?” His hands tightened in her hair. “Ah, I’m about to come. I wish I was coming high and hard in your little pussy. Hold still and let me fuck your pretty mouth a little. Oh, God that feels like a miracle.”

She clenched her eyes tight, overwhelmed by emotion, sucking him as hard as she could while he pulsed his cock in and out of her mouth.

“I feel it, honey,” he muttered. She felt it too, his penis swelling even larger in her mouth. “I’m going to come.”

He groaned gutturally. She felt warm semen jet onto her tongue. He jerked his hips more forcefully, but she kept up with him, sucking him while he ejaculated, keeping his final ride smooth and electric. He’d given her so much pleasure, she’d forgotten herself . . . lost herself in it. She wanted to do the same for him.

She wanted to do more.

Chapter Six

John insisted that she put back on every stitch of clothing she possessed, including bra, panties, scarf and boots. “Every little scrap will help keep you warm,” he told Jennifer.

He brushed off his coat and donned it. After he’d found the softest spot available, he called to Jennifer and she came down on the ground with him. He took her into his arms, marveling at how soft she felt, so feminine pressed against the straight, hard planes of his body. She lay against his abdomen and chest and he closed his coat around her, hugging her tight.

She turned her face into his chest and gave a low purr of contentment.

“You all right?” he asked, caressing her jean-covered hip.

“I’m very good,” she murmured, turning her face into his chest. He liked the way she did that, nuzzling her nose into his chest as if she craved his heat, his nearness. After a moment, she laid her cheek against him. He felt her muscles go lax, and wondered if she slept.

He listened to the sound of the falling water and considered their chances for getting out of the cave alive and well. If they could just hold out for another two days, chances were a rescue team would eventually find them. Two more days trapped with Jennifer Turner.

There were worse ways for a guy to spend his time.

A hell of a lot of worse ways for a man to die.

No, they’d get out. That was a good certainty. There’d be a decent insistence upon finding him when he was noticed missing, but Jennifer Turner? They’d plow the ground until they found her.

They’d be rescued. No doubt.

But the longer he spent with Jennifer, wouldn’t it be harder for him to let her go? He got it, why she’d wanted to become intimate with him. She’d instinctively understood it would help her combat the terrifying fear and claustrophobia she experienced in the absolute darkness. They were clearly sexually compatible, that much was a certainty. But once they were free of the cave and she was no longer living on the edge of fear, his use to her . . . her need for him, would entirely dissipate.

“John?” she asked, scattering his thoughts.

“Yes?”

“Earlier . . . when you said that thing about the man your ex-wife fell in love with, how he had a bum knee but a great set of eyes, what did you mean by that?”

“I was just sulking.”

She lifted her head from his chest.

“No, you weren’t. You don’t sulk.”

She said it with so much confidence, even sounding a little defensive at his self-criticism.

“Something happened to Adele and me about six months before our divorce. I guess you could say it was the first step leading to our breakup. Maybe not. I don’t know. It probably would have happened sooner or later, but what happened just set things in motion.”

“What?” she whispered.

“Two men broke into our town house one night. Burglars.”

“Oh no.”

“Yeah. We were sleeping. I would have been alerted sooner if Enzo was there, but we’d just returned from a trip to Adele’s mother’s, and she’s allergic to dogs. We got home late, and Enzo was still staying at a friend’s house. I heard the burglars and woke up, but they were already closing in on the bedroom by the time I got out of bed. I caught one of them as they entered the door. I hit him in the eye and in the midriff, and it sounded like the air had been knocked out of him. He was wheezing and gasping. Adele screamed. I grabbed for the second guy, but then there was a loud crash and the one I hadn’t hit started cursing. I found out later that Adele had woken up while the man was choking her and started to struggle. He’d used a lamp to hit her head. He’d knocked her out cold.”

“Oh my God.”

“I caught the second guy by the hair as they tried to flee, but his buddy had regained some alertness. He held a gun against Adele’s head and threatened to shoot her if I didn’t let his friend go. We found out a couple months later that I’d broken one of the ribs of the guy holding the gun. I guess he was in too much pain to really care about finishing the burglary—or Adele and me. He told his friend they were leaving.”

“Thank goodness. Was Adele hurt bad?”

“She had a concussion and some scratches. She was shaken up, more than anything.”

“That’s understandable.” For a few seconds, neither of them spoke. “So . . . how did that crime end up leading to your divorce?”

“Later, the police came to question Adele and me while she was in the hospital. They kept her there for a twenty-four-hour observation period because of her head. We described what had happened. I told them that one of the burglars had been about five foot eleven with longish hair and the other had been about six foot with a lean, wiry build. I explained that the taller guy’s left eye would be blackened. I also explained that despite their warnings, I’d followed the pair of them to the front door and heard them start up a car. The police immediately asked me for the make and model, if I’d seen license plates and stuff.”

“They didn’t realize you were blind,” Jennifer murmured. It didn’t shock her. John had an uncanny ability to fool a seeing person into thinking he saw everything they did.

“No. I told them then. But Adele had gotten really quiet as I described everything to the police. It’d been the first time she’d heard me tell the whole story. It really bothered her, even though she didn’t tell me so point-blank until a month or so later.”

“I don’t understand. What bothered her?” Jennifer asked slowly.

“That I had stood so close to the fleeing men, but couldn’t tell the police more details to help them catch them. If I’d been sighted, I could have told them the color of their hair and given descriptions of their clothing. I could have given them license plate numbers. The criminals would have been behind bars a hell of a lot quicker than they were.”

“That’s completely nonsensical,” Jennifer stated bluntly. “You gave them better descriptions than a lot of sighed people could.”

“It rattled Adele’s world, though. Made her feel less secure.”

“That wasn’t your fault. You protected her. You kept her safe from those jerks.”

“Did I?” he asked mildly.

He felt her focused attention on him in the silence that followed.

“Yes. You did,” she said staunchly.

He inhaled deeply. “I suppose that’s a matter of opinion. The fact is, if I’d been sighted—if I could have just been able to give a description of make and model and license number—those assholes would have potentially been off the streets in a matter of hours. As it was, Adele felt really vulnerable, knowing they were out there somewhere, wondering if they’d come back. I kept reassuring her, and we took a lot of precautionary measures, but the seed of doubt had been planted.”

“Two foul criminals made your wife doubt you,” she mumbled incredulously.

“She didn’t feel that I could protect her, Jennifer. Not with my disability.”

He heard her slight gasp, as if she’d opened her mouth to argue, but she stopped herself.

“Did they ever catch them?” she asked after a moment.

“Yeah. Three months after the break-in, one of the guys was brought in on a drug possession charge. His prints matched those from our condo. He informed on his partner for a lighter sentence.”

“And that didn’t reassure Adele any?”

“I think it was too late, then. It might have been too late the minute those guys chose our house to burglarize.”

“Adele was being completely unfair. You
did
keep her safe. But even if you hadn’t, it wouldn’t have been anyone’s fault but those two criminals’.”

“She felt differently about it. She has a right to her opinion.”

“But you believe Adele was right to judge you like she did,” Jennifer said slowly. “I can tell by the tone of your voice.”

He gave an impatient sigh. “What if I do, a little? It’s hard for a man, to have his home breached in that way, to have his wife threatened and assaulted. Every man on the planet would wish he could have done more. Almost every other man, woman and child on the planet would have been able to see that car.”

“A good portion of them wouldn’t have stopped those assholes from doing their worst to a loved one, like you did.”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Like I said, Adele’s insecurities about me would have come out sooner or later. The robbery just brought it all to a head. She thought she understood what she’d been getting into marrying a blind man, but she discovered she was wrong.”

“Hopefully
you
discovered she was a spineless, faithless weakling.”

“Everyone has their weak points,” he said. “That doesn’t mean Adele was a weakling. It just means we weren’t meant for each other, that’s all.”

She gave a small grunt and put her head back on his chest. He couldn’t help but be warmed at how outraged she seemed. He’d told only two close friends about the circumstances leading up to his divorce, and they’d been nothing but incredulous and resentful over Adele’s reaction. But underneath their seeming support, he’d wondered if there hadn’t been a vague embarrassment, as if his friends too had felt a trace of shame for him that he’d been helpless to do something a seven-year-old child could have done.

Jennifer’s reaction of sheer disgust was one he hadn’t experienced so far. Strangely, it soothed him. How much had his own shame been a factor in how he’d perceived his friends’ reactions? How much had it played a part in his feelings of inadequacy when it came to Adele?

“I’ll gather from all of this that being able to protect your woman was of prime importance not just to Adele, but to you,” she mumbled into his chest a moment later.

“Yeah. I think that’s a fair statement,” he said, stroking her hair.

“Well just for the record, I think that protection should go both ways between a couple. But aside from that, if there was one person in the world I’d choose to be at my back in a dangerous situation, I’d pick you.”

Warmth flooded him at her simple honesty. He downplayed his response out of old habit. “You didn’t have much of a choice in this situation. You’re stuck with me.”

She rubbed her cheek against his chest. “As far as I can tell, I was blessed with you.”

He lay awake with nothing but his rioting thoughts for company when Jennifer’s breath became even and peaceful.

* * *

He awoke to the sound of Enzo’s barking.

“John? John Corcoran? You down that hole?” a distant voice called a minute later.

“
Lila?
Is that you?” he bellowed.

“John?” Jennifer mumbled.

“It’s okay,” he murmured, stroking her shoulder until she sat up. He did the same. “Lila, be careful of the ground. It might give,” he yelled.

“I’ll get myself fixed to a tree, I ain’t going nowhere,” Lila Raschamack, one of the longtime denizens of the forest, yelled back.

“Do you have another rope?”

“Yep. Got a good length for you too.”

John stood and found his cane. “How did you know we were down here?”

“Been looking since before dawn. Katie Pierce called me and told me she’d gotten a message you two had fallen into a sinkhole. She contacted the authorities, and she and Rill are with them. They were going to start searching at first light. She knew I didn’t live far from your place, though, and called me to see if I’d noticed anything.”

“Who is Lila?” Jennifer whispered next to him.

“Lila Raschamack. She lives a few miles from my place.”

“Wait . . . the
chinchilla
lady?”

John started. “Katie told you about her?” he murmured, grinning. John had heard from Sherona Legion that Katie Pierce and Lila had formed an unlikely friendship. Katie, who worked for the county helping the poor and illiterate do their taxes, had assisted the rough-hewn, laconic Lila out of a pinch with the IRS last year. Despite the fact that Lila had held Katie at gunpoint upon Katie’s first visit to her isolated chinchilla farm, Katie was currently the only other person on the planet to whom Lila ever offered one of her prized cigars. Lila hated people as a matter of course, but she’d known John since he was a kid, and tolerated him better than most.

“John? Want me to send down the rope?” Lila called.

“What’s wrong?” Jennifer asked him, clearly sensing his hesitancy.

“I’m worried about the ground giving way beneath the rope once our weight is on it. The ground gets thicker and more secure as you move outward from the sinkhole, but still . . .”